Wasting
Sakina
did not know her age. She never went to a school. She had been married for three years. Her husband
was a labourer. They lived in a joint family with her in-laws in a house which
had electricity but no gas connection. They cooked on wood collected from fields adjacent to a canal. The tap water was deemed good for
drinking because of the proximity of the canal. They did not boil it before
use. The nearest government health facility was about 5km from
their home. Sakina described her health and her husband’s health as ‘not the
best’. Her husband had hurt his back at work, something that bothered
him a lot.
Their son, Sanval was
just about a year old. He was delivered at a hospital through C-section. Sakina could start breastfeeding him only on the 8th day of
his birth. Before that he was given packaged milk because, she said ‘I was
told at the hospital to feed him milkpack’. Sanval
was also not weighed at the time of birth but Sakina believes that his weakness was visibly noticeable at
that time too. When his condition didn’t improve, they took him to various
doctors where they found out about his Sokra
‘only through ultrasound’. Medicine prescribed by doctors and 'even blood
transfusion' did not change the condition of the child who suffered from wasting. RUTF (Ready to Use
Therapeutic Food) provided by the LHWs also did not help as the child ‘couldn’t
digest it’. Sakina and her husband took their child to a pir (spiritual healer) because ‘a lot of people go to pirs for many illnesses’, but it didn’t
result in improvement in Sanval’s health.
Sakina and her
husband are continuing their son’s medical and spiritual treatment. She reports that the RUTF or other solid food such as porridge (dalya) or cereal (cerelac) upset his stomach. Therefore, she avoids solid food; ‘I
mostly just give him water and milk, but sometimes I also give him rusk with
tea’. But diarrhoea might be caused by contaminated water? Sakina wonders if
that was possible at all because she had made a habit of using ‘fresh tap water’.
Children in Punjab (< 5 yrs).
34% are underweight
34% are stunted
18% are wasted
(MICS 2014)
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